My 76-year-old brother, Bill, lives in a 4-person unlicensed home in Oak Park. Staffing is with a long-established provider agency, but they are on bare-bones staffing levels (basically about 6 employees cover the 24/7/365 needs of the 4 souls living in this home). The ladies who work there are putting in a lot of overtime because additional folks cannot be hired since the provider can only pay $10-$11 per hour.
To make matters worse, my brother’s day program provider is ceasing all “facility-based” work and giving up their “deviated wage” certificate all due to the onerous HCBS rules being implemented within Oakland County. Our CMH/PIHP (“Oakland Community Health Network) won’t relent on its strict HCBS interpretations. My brother will probably be placed in some sort of “senior’s program” where he is taken out into the community to “volunteer”, or “experience” the mall, the park, the zoo, etc. ALL THINGS THAT HE ALREADY DOES! Please know that Bill has significant ambulation issues. He can be loud and also swears a lot. He also has bath-rooming issues too. The pay rates for the day programming aren’t all that much better; staff is difficult to find for this aspect as well. – Tom Kendziorski